I think Chait gets the lay of the land right here. What matters to congressional Republicans is low taxes for the wealthy, period. They’ll take cuts to spending for the poor, and they’ll accept cuts to middle class programs if they can blame Democrats for them, but given the choice they would much rather have upper-class tax cuts than cuts to Social Security and Medicare. And Republicans have a “plan” to reduce tax loopholes in the same sense that the Heritage Foundation had a “health care reform” plan.

Comments (39)

And Republicans have a “plan” to reduce tax loopholes in the same sense that the Heritage Foundation had a “health care reform” plan.

I’ve already seen people complain that White House proposals to actually close tax loopholes on the wealthy amounts to “adopting Mitt Romney’s plan.”

It’s as if the entire argument about Mitt Romney’s low effective tax rate, the discussion about Warren Buffet paying a lower tax rate than his secretary, and the proposals to get rid of tax breaks for oil companies and off-shoring jobs never existed. Nope, closing tax loopholes that benefit the rich and ultra-rich is now a Republican idea, and those Democrats who propose to do so are sellouts.

A) A modest increase in the income tax rate on the wealthy and massive slashing of social security and medicare

OR

B) A tax cut for the wealthiest 1% and a mild increase in spending on social security and medicare

They would pick B every time. It’s a no-brainer for them, while a group that had a priority on cutting the safety net to the bone would take A with the assumption that in post-Reagan America tax increases are easy to roll back while new spending is hard to allocate. So live with A for a year and then start agitating for more tax cuts.

The fact that the GOP doesn’t have a plan is patently obvious, from Boehner’s “Plan B” all the way back to the plan he hashed out with Obama on the golf course.

The GOP’s stance from day one is to reject whatever Obama offers, and then whine about how Obama isn’t working with them or giving them a good plan.

The thing is – look at the Fournier piece we mocked yesterday. It works! The pundit class thinks/propagandizes that Obama isn’t cutting the bullshit enough. The end result – Republicans don’t need to take any hits from trying to sell their shitty, massively unpopular ideas.

perhaps there was, for the 30 minutes before reagan then spent us into deficits, with his 600 ship navy, etc.

32 years ago, we didn’t have the work of picketty and saez to suggest that even at 70% it’s hard to find a disincentive effect, so yes, there was an adequate argument economically.

of course, it still boiled down to the obscenely rich getting the bulk of the tax savings, taking them out of circulation in the economy. add to that the slashing of rates on long-term capital gains (for which there was zero economic justification), and it was simply a tax smorgasbord for the wealthy.

As a last comment before my plane closes the doors; by and large, high income people get that way from capital gains, not straight income, which is why treating capital gains as ordinary income without special tax treatment should get much more attention than it does on the left.

1) There are apparently already federal laws that make it possible for states (possibly also municipalities) to deny overtime pay (by instead offering comp time)

2) This is of course being spun by the Right as a compassionate, family-friendly creation of flex-time – but money-stretched, status-poor hourly workers typically don’t want flex time, they want money (and many want the stability of a predictable work schedule); and in any case, flex time under such circumstances doesn’t mean freedom to work when you want, it means compulsion to work whatever shifts the boss pleases. And Cantor’s law apparently gives the boss a year or so to come up with the comp time, to boot …

Way back, in the dim and distant past (early 80s), I was a TX State employee. That was their practice, at least for those of us on salary. Also, the lege would give us new holidays rather than pay raises. So I couldn’t afford to do much, but I had a lot of free time to not do it in.

i must admit, rep. cantor intrigues me. he’s jewish, in an area not well known for being tolerant of non-fundie christians. i guess they figure they got themselves a “smart jew-boy” in congress, so they won’t burn a cross on his front lawn, just yet.

I’m afraid I don’t agree. I think many of these guys are even more rigidly dogmatic about their aversion to the New Deal part of government than they are attached to their own immediate self interest in lower rates.

But it would be awfully easy to find out for sure: The Dems could propose a deal that included a 1% cap gains cut while preserving Social Security and Medicare benefits. If you are right, they would jump at it. It would increase the deficit (by their worldview), but if they don’t care about anything but taxes, so what?